Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

In this position paper, James Parco provides compelling evidence there has been a disturbing expansion and entrenchment of Christian fundamentalism in the U.S. military, a cultural force which remains at times both tacitly and overtly endorsed by senior military leaders. Parco supports his claim by presenting a number of case studies demonstrating a clear pattern of unconstitutional religiously sectarian behavior. He then analyzes the merits of the competing philosophical perspectives on the proper role of religious expression by men and women in uniform.

Parco concludes the report with recommendations that those in power should implement immediately in order to fully protect the U.S. military’s necessarily secular foundation and the religious freedom of all who volunteer to serve.

This report fits well with the work of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which has worked for years to expose the abuses that go on within the military, driven by those who think their job is to turn soldiers into Christians.

The fundamentalism in the military isn’t an accident and isn’t a broad movement of various Evangelical sects. It’s much more narrow and in support of Dominionism. Dominionism take the idea of a Manchurian candidate and explodes it to the large scale. If they can set enough fundies in enough places (including the leaders and generals of the military and spy depts), they can ‘bloodlessly’ flip us into a defacto theocracy.

I only spent four years in the army (1980-84), but things were way different in my day. God-botherers were typically scorned if they waved it in your face, and no one I knew took religion seriously. I was in an MI unit, so, despite the jokes, we generally had a better educated and smarter class of soldier, that may explain it. But from my perspective things do change, albeit slowly, in the military.